It’s no secret that access to natural spaces improves communities. There’s a mountain of anecdotal experiences and scientific studies that prove being around trees makes us feel good and makes our neighborhoods more desirable and sustainable.
Communities are making street trees and green spaces a priority.
The greening of urban roads becomes an increasingly important task as people continue to migrate from rural towns into cities. Street trees make us happier just by being around them, and they have the added benefit of storing carbon and water and providing homes and food for wildlife. When those trees finally succumb to disease or fall from a storm they must be removed (and hopefully replaced). So, what happens to all that wood when they come down?
Typically, it’s chopped, chipped, and hauled away to a landfill. In a best-case scenario, it might be added to a municipal compost pile. This system unnecessarily contributes to waste and carbon emissions. In a forest, the tree would remain on the ground until it had rotted back into the soil, providing all the benefits of down, woody debris, like wildlife habitat and nutrient recycling. This can’t happen on Main Street, so what’s the next best option?
If you live in one of a select few cities (though this number continues to climb), your downed street trees may be given a second life as a salvaged wood product. The expanding urban forest, growing demand for local materials, and concern for climate change has led to an emerging market of timber products made specifically with salvaged city trees and reclaimed lumber. Two major companies leading this charge are New York City-based Tri-Lox and Los Angeles-based Angel City Lumber (ACL).
Located in Brooklyn, Tri-Lox is a research, design, and production company that aims to create a circular wood products system that uses local lumber in local projects. Tri-Lox wood comes in a series of themed collections, like the Skyline collection, which repurposes old NYC water tower wood, The Watershed Collection, which utilizes trees from sustainably managed forests in the NYC, Delaware, Hudson, and Connecticut watersheds, and the Industry collection, which reclaims and repurposes wood from old industrial spaces, like factory flooring from NYC’s manufacturing past. They also take salvaged city trees.
Image: The cycle of growing and using urban wood. Credit: Tri-Lox.
Tri-Lox is the first of its kind to salvage street trees in the Big Apple, and as part of the Forest for All NYC Coalition they’ve worked with some of the city’s largest forest managers, like Green-Wood Cemetery and NYC Parks. They know that “creating a healthier, more robust NYC forest does not simply mean planting more trees, but also having a system of long-term care that considers the entire lifecycle of the tree.” The coalition and its NYC Urban Forest Agenda drafted a roadmap that emphasizes the equal importance of planting trees, growing urban forests, expanding the green job market, and transforming what was once wood waste into a usable, sustainable, and local products.
Image: The Manhattan skyline behind the Tri-Lox lumber yard embodies the company’s commitment to local, urban lumber. Credit: Tri-Lox.
This process began as a pilot project with planned removal to salvage hazardous NYC Parks trees. Foresters and arborists were trained to use an app to evaluate and label the trees for removal. The trees were then brought to a landing space to be stored and milled. Some of them went back to where they came from, to be used as park infrastructure like playgrounds and benches, while others were used in local construction projects. NYC Parks and Green-Wood Cemetery, where most of the trees came from, both have policies of replanting trees after they die, so the urban canopy is not permanently lost when a tree is felled.
After a successful initial run, Tri-Lox is now in a research phase of how to make this process a regular part of their work. Liz Zink, the Creative Director at Tri-Lox, says that staff are asking and answering questions like how to eliminate trees from the waste stream completely by finding a use for every tree part, no matter how small. They’re also interested in fully understanding what kind of wood purchases NYC makes and what opportunities there are to insert salvaged wood into those systems. This includes creating a portfolio for all the uses of wood that clients can choose from. Long term goals to address these questions may lead to a permanent landing zone where the city can drop off trees for processing as well as methods to address the seasonal influx of downed trees during storms.
Tri-Lox has repurposed several hundred trees so far and is continuing to do so on a small scale in Green-Wood Cemetery. In the meantime, wood comes from their other collections. Their biggest clients are traditional and landscape architects, and you can find Tri-Lox products in private and public spaces alike, such as the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.
Image: The NEST sculptural playscape at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum was designed and built by Tri-Lox and was inspired by the nests of the baya weaver bird. Credit: Tri-Lox.
On the other side of the country, Angel City Lumber honors the trees of Los Angeles by sourcing material exclusively from locally felled trees. ACL processes approximately 600 trees annually, sourced from both private and public services. In 2024, ACL secured timber sales contracts with the United States Forest Service, allowing them to obtain hazard and snag Ponderosa and Jeffrey Pines from the Angeles National Forest, which would otherwise remain as potential fuel for wildfires. You can utilize Angel City Lumber’s custom milling service, if you have a project or product in mind for your trees, or you can donate a hazard tree that you have no use for. The wood is then either used on the property it came from, sold in the store as slabs or finished products like benches, or custom milled for architects and contractors. Over half of ACL wood is sold for construction or landscaping material to nearby firms who want environmentally friendly building supplies in their designs. They view the design firms they partner with as private chefs, while they’re the nearby butcher, carefully prepping the meat to be bought. Following this train of thought, the forest landowner can be the farmer, growing trees until it’s time to send them to market.
Most street trees in LA are ornamental and not native, but it is becoming more fashionable to plant native trees. When old ornamentals are replaced, ACL uses their unique species status to connect the buyer with the wood. Chef and food activist Alice Waters partnered with David Tanis, acclaimed chef and writer, to develop Lulu, a restaurant committed to prioritizing sustainability through local, regenerative food and design located in the courtyard of the Hammer Museum in Westwood, Los Angeles. ACL furnished tables from a local bunya bunya tree that stood a few miles away from the restaurant as an homage to the still-standing bunya bunya located out front of the legendary Chez Panisse, opened by Alice Waters in Berkeley, California. ACL founder, Jeff Perry says the work that they do at ACL is about fostering an emotional connection to the trees and creating a connection to our local urban forest and wood. Knowing the species and the neighborhood it came from creates community pride among consumers in what could have been a waste product.
Image: Angel City Lumber helped transform Bradley Green Plaza Alley into a space for kids and families with a variety of log benches and stools. Credit: Angel City Lumber.
Angel City Lumber’s mission and vision is to show reverence to Los Angeles trees and re-localize the lumber industry. Just like Tri-Lox, they’re trying to use every part of the tree. Demand is highest for lumber, but smaller parts of the tree, like branches, can be used by local artists or burned for soil nutrients. ACL aspires to one day handle every tree that comes down in LA county and nearby national parks and forests. Without even getting into traditional logging, Jeff predicts this would be more than enough wood to satisfy the needs of the city.
Image: A tree that would’ve been headed for a landfill is now headed for a sawmill. Credit: Angel City Lumber.
Despite their geographical distance, Tri-Lox and Angel City Lumber are unified in their goals towards a cyclical, sustainable wood products market. In a world that is ever more environmentally conscious, people are finding new ways to reduce waste from their communities and support the forests- urban or otherwise- that they depend on for recreation, carbon sequestration, water filtration, and more. With the two largest metropolises in the country leading the charge, hopefully others will follow suit, until it’s as common to see a salvaged lumber yard in a big city as it is to see a street tree itself.
If you want to read more about the innovative ways people are using wood, check out the Wood Products blog collection on MyWoodlot.
